Cadillac played it safe with its first Formula 1 lineup, bypassing an American driver for series veterans Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez.
Neither driver has seats on the grid this season but with a combined 16 wins and 527 starts between them, Bottas and Pérez were the pragmatic choices to help build the Cadillac program set to launch in 2026. The hires announced Tuesday bring years of F1 knowledge to Cadillac, a division of U.S. car giant General Motors that will become the 11th team on the grid in 2026.
“We believe their experience, their leadership and their technical acumen are really what we need,” said Dan Towriss, CEO of the Cadillac Formula 1 team and TWG Motorsports. “It's the right combination, the right drivers at the right time, and we're humbled by their belief in us and in this project.”
Bottas and Pérez have been considered the front-runners for months as drivers lobbied for two new seats on what will be a 22-car grid next year.
Although the project started by Michael Andretti in 2021 was designed to be a true American team with a driver from the United States, Andretti had to exit the effort to help Cadillac and TWG gain approval from Formula One Management.
Towriss bought Andretti out, the team is now owned by TWG Global, and Towriss and GM President Mark Reuss said in May at the Miami Grand Prix that hiring an American driver was no longer a top priority.
IndyCar driver Colton Herta from California was earmarked for a seat by Andretti, but he's yet to earn the super license required to compete in F1 and Cadillac is content to wait for an American. Towriss also laughed at recent reports that he planned to move Herta to Formula 2 next year for Herta to gain the needed points for his license.
Even if Herta did have a super license, he doesn't have the F1 experience Cadillac wants for its launch.
“What it comes back to is experience in Formula 1 carried the day,” Towriss said. "Everybody's new, everybody's working together for the first time. We think that the experience that these two bring are really what's most important.
“We certainly do think about and it's important to us to make sure there's a pathway for an American driver in Formula 1 and we'll be working on that. For this inaugural season, for what the team needs, and what these drivers bring, this was the right combination for the team.”
Towriss and his new drivers say wins will take time. Like all motorsports series, the technical work and engineering needed for success takes years to master and the challenges in F1 are perhaps the most difficult in sports. The series is also debuting a new car and a new engine next season — Cadillac will lease engines from Ferrari — meaning all teams will be adapting to a host of new specs.
Perez said Cadillac will “start in a very difficult position” but the key will be ”how quickly we’ve managed to progress.”
“It’s a project,” Perez said. “It’s not about going to win races and score points”
Haas, the only other American team on the grid, has been racing in F1 since 2016 and is now in its 10th season. It not only has no wins, but no podium finishes. The Cadillac team figures to bring more money and support to its effort but no one will be surprised if podiums will take a while.
“We don’t need to prove anything to anyone. We’ve got to put the team first,” Bottas said. “That’s what we’re here for and probably why we were chosen.”
The driver search was spearheaded by team principal Graeme Lowdon, who had at least a dozen viable options but told The Associated Press last month he had narrowed the list to "three or four” real contenders.
Pérez of Mexico is 35 and Bottas of Finland turns 36 later this week. They have each finished runner-up in the championship before.
Bottas was second in the standings to his then-Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in 2019 and 2020, while Pérez, F1’s most successful Mexican driver, was second when his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen dominated 2023.
Red Bull dropped Pérez at the end of last year. Bottas is a Mercedes reserve driver this year after scoring no points in 2024 at Sauber.
Both could also make a big contribution to car development as the F1 regulations change for 2026. In commercial terms. Pérez has brought major sponsorship from Mexico to his previous teams, while Bottas’ humor and social media presence make him a fan favorite.
Reuss said Pérez helps the team connect with one of the automaker's most critical markets.
“The market in Mexico is a big deal for General Motors, and frankly, North America,” Reuss said. “We sell a lot of cars in Mexico and the fanbase there is absolutely enthusiastic. Those are side benefits.”
Towriss said both drivers give the team tremendous commercial appeal.
“Checo and Valtteri have very strong followings, from a commercial standpoint, from a sponsorship standpoint, their impact from being on the Formula 1 circuit for many, many years,” said Towriss, before noting that experience was still the primary factor.
“We talked to a lot of drivers," he said. "When you really sit down and get into the experience... and being able to create this chemistry in a team, the conversations are different and they really stand out from the others.”
AP Sports Writer James Ellingworth contributed to this report.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Graeme Lowdon, the team principal of the new Formula One team Cadillac, talks to The Associated Press during an interview at the Silverstone racetrack, ahead of the British Formula One Grand Prix, in Silverstone, England, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland, left, and Red Bull driver Sergio Perez of Mexico participate in a media conference ahead of the Formula One Grand Prix at the Spa-Francorchamps racetrack in Spa, Belgium, July 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, file)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China's grip on the market for these materials that are crucial to high-tech products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, jet fighters and missiles.
It’s too early to tell how the bill, if passed, could align with the White House’s policy, but whatever the approach, the U.S. is in a crunch to drastically reduce its reliance on China, after Beijing used its dominance of the critical minerals market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in October, by which Beijing would continue to export critical minerals while the U.S. would ease its export controls of U.S. technology on China.
The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China, which processes more than 90% of the world's critical minerals. To break Beijing's chokehold, the U.S. government is taking equity stakes in a handful of critical mineral companies and in some cases guaranteeing the price of some commodities using an approach that seems more likely to come out of China's playbook instead of a Republican administration.
The bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., introduced Thursday would favor a more market-based approach by setting up the independent body charged with building a stockpile of critical minerals and related products, stabilizing prices, and encouraging domestic and allied production to help ensure stable supply not only for the military but also the broader economy and manufacturers.
Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to make the U.S. economy more resilient against China’s dominance that she said has left the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. Young said creating the new reserve is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.”
Rep. Rob Wittman, R.-Va., introduced the House version of the bill.
When Trump imposed widespread tariffs last spring, Beijing fought back not only with tit-for-tat tariffs but severe restrictions on the export of critical minerals, forcing Washington to back down and eventually agree to the truce when the leaders met in South Korea.
On Monday, in his speech at SpaceX, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon has in the past five months alone “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close six critical minerals deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”
One of the deals involves a $150 million of preferred equity by the Pentagon in Atlantic Alumina Co. to save the country's last alumina refinery and build its first large-scale gallium production facility in Louisiana.
Last year, the Pentagon announced it would buy $400 million of preferred stock in MP Materials, which owns the country's only operational rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, California, and entered into a $1.4-billion joint partnership with ReElement Technologies Corp. to build up a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets.
On Wednesday, Trump announced in a proclamation that the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign-sourced critical minerals and directed his administration to negotiate better deals. He said possible remedies would include minimum import prices for certain critical minerals.
“Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson.
The drastic move by the U.S. government to take equity stakes has prompted some analysts to observe that Washington is pivoting to some form of state capitalism to compete with Beijing.
“Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, a senior fellow at the Washington-based research institute Center for European Policy Analysis. She suggested that the new model could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”
Companies across the industry are welcoming the intervention from Trump's administration.
“He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It's about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face by having to import so many of these fundamental building blocks of technology and national defense,” NioCorp's Chief Communications Officer Jim Sims said. That company is trying to finish raising the money it needs to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.
In addition to trying to boost domestic production, the Trump administration has sought to secure some of these crucial elements through allies. In October, Trump signed an $8.5 billion agreement with Australia to invest in mining there, and the president is now aggressively trying to take over Greenland in the hope of being able to one day extract rare earths from there.
On Monday, finance ministers from the G7 nations huddled in Washington over their vulnerability in the critical mineral supply chains.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led several rounds of trade negotiations with Beijing, urged attendees to increase their supply chain resiliency and thanked them for their willingness to work together “toward decisive action and lasting solutions,” according to a Treasury statement.
The bill introduced on Thursday by Shaheen and Young would encourage production with both domestic and allied producers.
Congress in the past several years has pushed for legislation to protect the U.S. military and civilian industry from Beijing's chokehold. The issue became a pressing concern every time China turned to its proven tactics of either restricting the supply or turned to dumping extra critical minerals on the market to depress prices and drive any potential competitors out of business.
The Biden administration sought to increase demand for critical minerals domestically by pushing for more electric vehicle and windmill production. But the Trump administration largely eliminated the incentives for those products and instead chose to focus on increasing critical minerals production directly.
Most of those past efforts were on a much more limited scale than what the government has done in the past year, and they were largely abandoned after China relented and eased access to critical minerals.
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to the report.
FILE - NioCorp Chief Operating Officer Scott Honan tells a group of investors about the plans for a proposed mine during a tour of the site Oct. 6, 2021, near Elk Creek in southeast Nebraska. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Workers use machinery to dig at a rare earth mine in Ganxian county in central China's Jiangxi province on Dec. 30, 2010. (Chinatopix via AP, File)
